Yahoo is shutting down AltaVista, Axis and more

In an announcement reiterating the company’s interest on focusing on fewer products, Yahoo has announced that a number of services will be going away in the following weeks. The most notable is probably AltaVista, a search engine which some of you might remember from back in the day. Axis on the other hand, is a search plugin and iOS app that launched not too long ago. Judging by the fact that it’s already being shut down, Axis probably didn’t take off.

Here’s a list, straight from Yahoo, of all the products and services being shutdown along with their closure dates:

Yahoo! Axis (June 28, 2013)

If you installed the browser plug-in, it will no longer work. If you downloaded the app, it will continue to work, but won’t be actively maintained. We encourage you to use the Yahoo! Search app for iOS and Android.

You can still get all the latest sports news on Yahoo! Sports, play fantasy sports like Fantasy Football, and stay up-to-date when you’re on the go with our new Yahoo! Sports app for iOS and Android.

Yahoo! WebPlayer (June 30, 2013)

If you’re a publisher and currently using Yahoo! WebPlayer on your site, after June 30 the Yahoo! WebPlayer won’t load. Your users will continue to be able to play media files using native browser support. You may wish to locate and remove the following line in your code:

Yahoo! Downloads will no longer support 3rd party downloads. It will continue to offer downloads of Yahoo! products likeYahoo! Toolbar or Yahoo! Messenger.

Yahoo! Local API (September 28, 2013)

As part of this shutdown, all Yahoo! Local API documentation will also be removed from the Yahoo! Developer Network portal.

Yahoo! Term Extraction API (September 28, 2013)

We are eliminating direct access to the Yahoo! Term Extraction API and as of September 28, will require developers to go through YQL. We encourage all existing users of the Term Extraction Legacy API to migrate to YQL requests by September 28. You can use the YQL forums for any questions you might have about migrating to YQL. If you are already using the Term Extraction API via YQL, you don’t need to take any action.